Federal Reserve Bank of New York – Liberty Street Economics – Beverly Hirtle, Anna Kovner, and Eric McKay: “In March, the Federal Reserve and thirty-one large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) announced results of the latest Dodd-Frank Act-mandated stress tests. Some commentators have argued that BHCs, in designing their stress test models, have strong incentives to mimic the Fed’s stress test results, since the Fed’s results are an integral part of the Federal Reserve’s supervisory assessment of capital adequacy for these firms. In this post, we look at the 2015 stress test projections by the eighteen largest U.S. BHCs and by the Fed and compare them to similar numbers from 2013 and 2014. As stress testing becomes more established, do we see evidence that the BHCs are mimicking the Fed? The Dodd-Frank Act requires both large BHCs and the Fed to conduct annual stress tests under macroeconomic scenarios provided by the Fed. These stress tests are designed to measure the impact of adverse economic and financial market conditions on each BHC’s income and regulatory capital ratios. The Dodd-Frank Act stress test (DFAST) results are publicly disclosed each year by the BHCs and the Fed.”